Not what I expected...

First day of the Cannes Lions Festival of Creativity


I am definitely overwhelmed with everything going on at the festival. There is so much to see and do that it makes it hard to allocate your time just right. The first seminar I went to was the GoViral: The long idea. It was really good, I especially think the second speaker was awesome. They basically talked about how the same 10 pillars that apply to religion can also apply to brands. They compared microsoft and apple and pointed out why apple is better which I actually found kind of scandalous since microsoft has such a huge presence but I'm writing this on a mac so I guess I get the point. What really caught my eye though was the huge neuroscience experiment that was conducted on emotions with concern to brands, it must be the psychology major side of me. They also talked about smashables which was a concept that I hadn't actually considered. The example they gave for that was how coke designed a bottle that even after being smashed in to a bunch of pieces, would still be recognized as a coke brand. They also showed some examples from apple such as the sound that comes on when you turn on a mac. It was one of the better seminars of the day. The next seminar I went to was the one run by Um, L'Oreal, & BMW. This in my opinion was probably the biggest fail of the day in terms of content. The whole point of the seminar, as far as the description, was to talk about entrepreneurs and why they are future and vice versa, but, it failed. They didn't really talk about that at all and it felt more like I was intruding on a conversation between professionals. I liked the Direct Media lady, she was trying to make an effort along with the L'Oreal guy, but, it just wasn't what I expected. Basically they talked about their work and it felt more like a showcase. They had good tips here an there but nothing really great, especially not after the enlightenment I felt with GoViral. The next seminar stole the show in my opinion. It was thenetworkone and it was basically showcasing 3 independent agencies. My mind was in overload from all the good tips I was absorbing. It highlighted, the special group, muh-tay-zik/hof-fer and elephant cairo. They were really raw and just passionate about their work. They pointed out that big agencies were "dinosaurs" and that big agencies aim to please the client, and they aim to make great ads, and that they do. My favorite was definitely the panda one from elephant cairo. It was just so simple but hilarious! I also didn't realize how successful independent agencies were until they compared their wins last year against the big holding companies. Each agency gave amazing tips and I will definitely be looking back on those even when I go into the field.



The next seminar was supposed to be the highlight of people's day, I just went to see how dumb Nick Jonas could look in front of top names in the advertising world. However, nobody got what they expected. IMC2 hosted this panel style seminar with nick jonas as the headline. The moderator was apparently a big name in the industry but the only name I had was kind of a jerk. He was pushing really hard to be funny and placed way too much attention on Nick. I was pleasantly surprised by Nick's comments (kid did his homework) but it still wasn't enough to save the kind of boring/repetitive seminar. And the photographers taking the same picture a million times was really distracting. They talked about, or attempted to talk about, how the industry is in a kind of friends with benefits relationship. They had rules and guidelines but every time someone tried to express these, they would get interrupted (pretty rudely) by the moderator. I don't wanna bash the guy because I'm sure it takes guts to go up there and lead a whole discussion in an interesting manner, and humor is probably the best way to go, but, he pushed it almost to the point of being rude. Nonetheless, I didn't really learn much but that Nick Jonas isn't as bad as I thought he was, and he's not as bad looking as I thought either. My final seminar for the day was Felishman Hillard and it was on mobile media. I was pretty tired at this point, my brain wasn't mentally prepared for all of the disappointment/surprise/inspiration kind of feelings all at once. That being said, I thought it was pretty cool. The first speaker was basically trying to save the world, how can you be mad at that? He said for every 9,000 people in Kenya, there was 1 doctor. Yet studies showed the mobile phone ration was 1 out of 2. He thought it would be genius to send a reminder through SMS to have your kids vaccinated for Pneumonia (which apparently is the number 1 cause of death for kids) and receive a small incentive which would be the equivalent of what it cost to make the trip. This guy won the sympathy vote. Another surprise for me, however, was how much I liked the living social guy. I only know about living social because of the annoying ads that come on when I use pandora. But, this guy really won me over. He made a pretty cool video about interrupting the decision point in a consumers mind. Pretty awesome stuff. I ended the day by watching some commercials, they weren't as good as everything else I had seen so I left. I have pretty long day tomorrow and I'll probably have a lot to say, so, I'll cut it here. But I'm still really excited and hopefully I keep learning more! and meeting new people.